Stupid Games (dir. Nicolas Wendl & Dani Abraham)

By: Michael Borge

Watching the 2024 release Stupid Games by directors Nicolas Wendl and Dani Abraham feels a lot like watching really good high school sports. You know that you aren’t walking into the big leagues, but what you see is really pretty good for what it is. The premise: enthusiastic young men go to meet with a group of girls for dinner and a game night (the boys aren’t discreet about the fact that they are hoping for more on the agenda) when things start to take paranormal and dangerous turns, is not a new one. The film leans into a number of tropes of the horror genre the way a high school basketball team uses a pick and roll. While it may not be flashy, it definitely serves its purpose.

The actors play the parts they are given well, and seem to have chemistry as they interact. The majority of the film is set in a single apartment, and more specifically a room within the apartment. However, the space doesn’t get stale or feel like it is a limiting factor. That said, the weakest elements of the film are pacing and writing. The first act drags as we meet characters who are not entirely likable or unlikeable, and then are given dialogue that does not serve to make them more endearing or loathsome to the audience. This means that when characters face moments of crisis, it doesn’t necessarily elicit feelings of sadness or vindication for the audience. The score feels a bit intrusive early on, but that is largely a byproduct of the low-stakes nature of the dialogue in these sections. The third act seems to try to offset the early drag by really ramping up the pace to a point that events don’t necessarily have time to sink in for the audience. 

Given that the film was shot in less than a week on a budget of less than $10,000  (one YouTube comment from the directors states the budget was $6,000), Stupid Games punches well over its weight in terms of visual quality, production value, and the actual creation of tension in the second half of the movie. In contrast, the 2022 slasher Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey had a budget of roughly $100,000, including reshoots, and the film is literally too dark to see what is happening quite often and has pacing such that it creates wait times between kills rather than actual tension. Credit to directors Wendl and Abrahams for maximizing their end product on a shoestring budget. All said and done, Stupid Games has a cast and crew that look capable of doing really good things, even if this film isn’t exactly that all the time. I would genuinely be curious about what the team here is capable of with a longer leash in future projects.

Target Score: 5/10 Serviceable work with a familiar premise. More fun than a round of Candyland with your kids.